Fast and dynamic generation of linear octrees for geological bodies under hardware acceleration

Abstract

In the application of 3D Geoscience Modeling, we often need to generate the volumetric representations of geological bodies from their surface representations. Linear octree, as an efficient and easily operated volumetric model, is widely used in 3D Geoscience Modeling. This paper proposes an algorithm for fast and dynamic generation of linear octrees of geological bodies from their surface models under hardware acceleration. The Z-buffers are used to determine the attributes of octants and voxels in a fast way, and a divide-and-conquer strategy is adopted. A stack structure is exploited to record the subdivision, which allows generating linear octrees dynamically. The algorithm avoids large-scale sorting process and bypasses the compression in linear octrees generation. Experimental results indicate its high efficiency in generating linear octrees for large-scale geologic bodies.